Renee Zellweger and the original bunny girl

A century after the publication The Tale of Peter Rabbit, children’s author Beatrix Potter is brought to life on screen by Renee Zellweger. We met the Texan actress on set on the Isle of Man.

Renee Zellweger slips out of her hotel room at dawn, a slim figure in a grey tracksuit.

She crosses the seafront road in Douglas, Isle of Man, where she is filming. Her early morning run is part of the intensely focused process she undergoes to create her new character, children’s author Beatrix Potter.

For an American actress who has already courted controversy by twice playing the very English Bridget Jones, this is a dangerous step. She is not only playing an English character once more, but an English icon. The life of Beatrix, who died on December 22nd, 1943, at the age of 77, has been tracked and recorded by an army of fans and historians.

‘I am more than aware of the question marks,’ admits Zellweger. ‘I am playing a character who is part of British history. Most people have read her books as a child or bought them for their own children. They all have an opinion. My first instinct was,

“Do I really want to put myself through it?” Then I kept on returning to the script and starting to think of her story and what we could do with it. I became hooked.’

The film, which opens on January 5, co-stars Ewan McGregor as Norman Warne, Beatrix’s publisher and later fiance, with Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, Gosford Park) as his sister and Bill Paterson, (The Killing Fields, Chaplin) and Barbara Flynn (Elizabeth 1) as Beatrix’s snobbish parents who disapproved of the engagement as beneath her.

Zellweger, who plays Beatrix in her late thirties and about to have her first book published, researched Potter's history thoroughly, even becoming a member of the Beatrix Potter Society (and enrolling the other main actors as a gift). She's determined to get things right. Curiously, though, she does all this alone. There is no entourage, as there is so often with big-name performers.

When she started researching the role, Renee became intrigued by the real Beatrix Potter, an artistic living in London, exactly a century before. There is a marked contrast between expectations then and now. Potter, who lived a well-heeled life at home with her wealthy parents in South Kensington had to work to develop her independence in a world not really ready for women of success and means.

Even though Beatrix had had several books published, she was never alone with Warne for the whole of their friendship, something which Zellweger finds ‘remarkable’.

‘She always had a chaperone, even though she was a woman in her late thirties. If she went to Norman’s house, his sister Millie was always there. Yet they were able to get to know each other well enough for him to want to propose to her and for her to want to accept.’

In reality, Norman wrote his marriage proposal by letter (although for the film, he does so face-to-face). Yet the pressure her parents successfully wielded to keep the engagement a secret, is strictly followed in the film’s script.

Part of what fascinated Zellweger was the mystery of Miss Potter’s personality. ‘I knew so little about her, because she was so determined to maintain the integrity of her private life. The more I read and the more information I was given, the more uncertain I became about who she really might have been.

‘She talked in her diaries about privacy and not wanting to be known. There is also no known record of her speaking voice, even though she must have been in such demand to talk. It made a very interesting journey for me to find the best way to be accurate and to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

‘The people closest to her described her as merry, joyful and jolly. She had a glow, apparently, with laughing eyes of brilliant blue. But there are so many contradictions. On the one hand, she was outgoing and expressive. On the other, she was very introverted and felt uncomfortable in crowds.

‘But when I studied the script, I began to understand why her upbringing informed the woman she became. I understood why she became more reserved because of the restrictions placed on her by her parents. She was cut off from her peers and she was also insecure. It made perfect sense to me – why she needed these characters, from Peter Rabbit onwards, to express things she could not say. It is clear she had a very rich internal existence.’

Beatrix always loved the Lake District where the family had holidayed regularly, and when Norman died only a month after he proposed, she bought a farm there.

‘I can understand her move to the Lake District to set up a new life for herself. She had become well known before settling there. I can understand the appeal of wanting to be distanced from the exchanges you have every day as a public person. I understand why you would want to go somewhere more remote, so your exchanges are less public.

Particularly if you are someone so introverted and private.’

The internationally-acclaimed actress and the late world-famous author certainly have in common a love of privacy. And for such a publicly known actress, Zellweger remains shy. It showed, during filming, she was guest of honour at ‘The World of Beatrix Potter Attraction’, at Bowness-on-Windermere for the unveiling of a sculpture by Anthony Bennett.

She slipped on her dark glasses and remained on the fringes. ‘I do my best, but I am really not very good at these things,’ she said. ‘I always admire people who can be extrovert and confident. I can be confident, but I like it to be among people I know well. I am not a “look at me” girl.’

As with the two Bridget Jones films, she maintains her English accent at all times during filming. She does not even break into her native

Texan, when talking to friends on her mobile. However Texans have a reputation for being open and friendly and, even within the self-imposed limitations of filming schedules and acting discipline, Zellweger certainly shows these characteristics. She was popular with the crew and surprised them on the final day of filming by talking in her own sing-song voice.

So is her acting career how she hoped it would be, when she took her first steps after university in Texas? ‘I never realised how important acting would become to me as a creative outlet,’ she says.

‘When I moved to Los Angeles, it was fantastic and terrifying. But through this profession I have learnt so much and been given the most extraordinary opportunities. The opportunity to play Beatrix Potter is a perfect example.’